


Of Angry Neighbours and Old Friends

by OpheliaAlexiou



Series: Novara Galactica [1]
Category: Novara Galactica
Genre: Attempt at humour, Battle, Combat, Comedy, Gen, Hard Science Fiction, Humour, Non-Erotic, Other, Sci-Fi, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 09:27:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10553998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OpheliaAlexiou/pseuds/OpheliaAlexiou
Summary: The Commonwealth comes to the aid of a long-silent branch of the human species with whom they long lost contact following the exodus from Earth.





	

For four years, the sounds of war were heard all throughout the planet of Russia II, including here in the heart of the Yamalia Province. Russia’s soldiery fought ferociously to safeguard every inch of land, and as the war wore on and went increasingly poorly, women were drafted into the military as a matter of utter necessity. Their attackers, the Klaxari, came in a seemingly continuous onslaught of military might and stubborn refusal to accept requests to return to a time of peaceful coexistence between the Russians and their powerful, warlike neighbour. The civilian population had been largely unaffected by the war, even as large sections of the Russian worlds were conquered and subjugated under the authority of Klaxari military commanders. Of the more than two billion Russian citizens on the two planets, this one hundred ninety-eighth year since the exodus from Earth, only one thousand one hundred ninety-one civilians had been killed. Every civilian who had been killed had taken up some manner of arms to resist the Klaxar subjugators, and had thus brought their deaths upon themselves, though even the families of those resisters were not subjected to undue hardship. The Russian military had fared far poorer, having in four years lost one thousand six hundred warships from their once-proud armada, and their ground forces had been diminished from thirty million to a scant three hundred thousand.

The conditions had deteriorated steadily over the last four years, despite the staunchest of Russian resilience, the defenders’ deepest resolve that they should never surrender to the invader. For Kazimir Volkov, the Captain of the R. F. S. Apostol, the situation seemed to be one incredible only in how dire it was, when his commanding officer had summoned him to the bunker for a special assignment. As he arrived, he was escorted quickly to the office door, and allowed to step inside to meet with Admiral Afanasii Petroff, who stood to greet him.

Kazimir was a man of worthy height, standing five feet eleven inches and one hundred ninety-five pounds to the impressive height of the Admiral, who was six feet four inches and two hundred thirty-five pounds. The Admiral was considerably his senior, having forty-seven years on the forty-year-old Captain, though both had short black hair speckled by some amount of grey. Kazimir’s eyes were deep blue to the bright green of the Admiral, and as their eyes made contact, the Admiral extended his hand, shaking hands with him firmly.

“I am glad that you were able to make it safely to the bunker, Captain Volkov,” said the Admiral as his hand returned to his side, “the situation is, as I am sure you are aware, truly calamitous. We must ask you to take the Apostol and flee with all conceivable haste in the direction of our one possible hope for salvation.”

“Admiral?”

“Fourteen years ago, the Klaxari attacked the combined star systems of the Chinese and the Indians, and they sent a messenger to the rest of Humanity to request assistance. Those we once knew as the Western Alliance are now part of a large, powerful alliance known as the People’s Commonwealth of Independently Aligned Worlds, and when the Indians and Chinese requested their assistance, they received it. Our one sliver of hope lies in the prayer that you might succeed in making it far enough from this planet to cross into subspace, but eight ships have been destroyed on similar assignment in the last nine months. You must take the Apostol and flee this system. A plan has been prepared, to cover your escape to the best of our ability so that your chance will be better than your predecessors in this task.”

“Affirmative, Admiral,” Kazimir answered immediately, “when do we leave?”

“Tonight at 8 PM. Prepare your crew for departure quickly, we will have one chance.”

Kazimir returned to his ship immediately: it was located in a concealed hangar, beneath the surface of a wide plain in the Yamalia Province. Yamalia was one of the three provinces that had not been overwhelmed and conquered by the Klaxar invaders, and that was at best a tenuous condition, having only a hundred thousand men and women remaining to defend the province at present.

The Apostol was a small vessel, with straight, blunt wings having a thirty-degree backswept angle, standing twelve meters tall, thirty-nine meters long, and sixteen meters across. The hull was tempered steel, plated and riveted, with as sleek and streamlined a design as was possible for the ship, average for an Orloff-class reconnaissance gunship. His crew of nine men and four women were assembled, attired in the same uniforms of dark grey accented in black as he wore himself, with a black leather belt and black leather combat boots, each armed with a laser pistol on one hip.

“Are we prepared to make our departure?” queried Kazimir, to which one of the women nodded, a brunette with greenish-hazel eyes, a lieutenant by the name of Akulina Ivanoff.

“All set, Captain, we only await the Admiral’s signal,” she affirmed as they quickly boarded the vessel and hurried to their combat stations. The ship powered up quickly, hovered up from the ground and floated in the hangar, awaiting the opening of the hangar doors above them and the signal that it was time to go. As the appointed time came, the hangar doors swept open and the lieutenant quickly rotated the ship in place, the engines pulsed, and the gunship lanced upward through the atmosphere of Russia II.

“Subspace Drive charging,” reported the ship’s engineer, as a crystalline construct located behind them began to shimmer and sparkle with the faintest hint of luminescence. The ship broke through the threshold of the manmade ozone layer of the planet and slid immediately into the midst of two hundred Russian warships.

“Incoming hail,” reported Akulina, and the screen immediately transitioned from black to a view of the bridge of the R. F. S. Asya, with Admiral Petroff in the captain’s chair.

“Do not engage the enemy, Captain Volkov, your sole task is to survive long enough to enter subspace,” the Admiral said, and Kazimir nodded once in curt understanding. The screen immediately went black, and the formation of warships pushed away from the planet, as the lieutenant switched the screen to a view from the front of the Apostol. There, about ten thousand kilometers from the foremost vessel of Admiral Petroff’s fleet, rested a Klaxar fleet of three hundred warships. The Russian ships swept into a new formation, the shape of a spearhead against the narrow, oval-shaped Klaxar battleships, and impulse engines pressed into overdrive. The soaring wedge sliced forward through the expanse of open space, taking the offensive against the invading force while ensuring that the R. F. S. Apostol was as close to invisibility as possible, veiled by allied ships. Even as the fleet soared forward, the enemy fleet came forward to meet them, and embedded cannons fired pulses of angry red energy that slammed into the shimmering, pale bluish white of Russian shields.

Within minutes, ninety Russian vessels had been destroyed in the confrontation, but even so, they managed to destroy sixty of the enemy’s ships in the process. The Apostol continued forward, remaining in as protected a space as possible as the subspace drive charged, colourless crystalline construct now glimmering with a glow comparable to a sixty-watt white light bulb.

“Ten minutes, Captain,” reported the ship’s engineer, and Kazimir winced. Ten minutes had not ever seemed so long before, but today it felt like an eternity, as dozens of Russian vessels were blown to smithereens around them, and they were barred from participation. Objectively, he knew that there was little contribution one little Orloff could have made, but as a warrior it grated on him to watch his brothers-in-arms slain while he was prohibited from lifting a hand to save them.

The minutes crawled past, as the Russian fleet was torn to shreds, but through tactical focus, they managed to deal out a level of punishment that was better than negligible. As the crystalline construct behind them charged up, they watched the painful loss the Russian fleet was taking to protect them as they bulldozed into the enemy formation. If the Apostol could make it out the far side, there was a chance, a sliver of a chance it would be able to escape into subspace before any of the Klaxar warships could come around to fire on it.

“Subspace Drive charged and ready, Captain,” the ship’s engineer updated, and Kazimir nodded.

“Incoming hail,” reported Akulina, and immediately the screen switched to show the bridge of the Asya, and Admiral Petroff. The bridge was broken, with sparks flying from snapped machinery and several of the officers already dead as result of the deadly efficiency of Klaxar weapons fire.

“Godspeed, Captain Volkov, the Russian Feder-”

The transmission ended abruptly, and as the screen switched back to a view of their surroundings, Kazimir noticed that the space where the Admiral’s ship had been was now occupied by a field of debris. Of the two hundred ships that had launched the offensive, there were only two dozen remaining, though they had destroyed one hundred and thirty-four of the Klaxar ships in the process. Several Klaxar ships were coming around to positions from whence they could fire on the Apostol, and as the first opened fire, a Russian frigate swept into the space between. The frigate shuddered visibly as it was struck broadside by the weapons fire of the Klaxar cannon, but held firm enough to provide a momentary shield for the Apostol’s evasion.

“Activate!” shouted Kazimir, and the engineer nodded. His fingers wrapped around the horizontal, hardwood handle and pulled the two ribbons of steel toward him, and the crystalline construct behind them flared. Immediately, Lieutenant Ivanoff jerked on her controls, and as a rift opened two hundred meters beneath the ship with a beautifully sky blue colour, the Apostol rolled over and dove like a fighter jet hitting the deck. Bursts of red energy whipped past, coming within ten meters of the reconnaissance gunship before it reached the rift and vanished through the veil of sky blue luminescence. The rift slammed shut behind them a half-second later, and the Apostol whirled and levelled off in the sky blue expanse of subspace.

“Descend to Subspace Layer Nine,” Kazimir ordered as he heaved a deep sigh of relief, coloured with sorrow for the lives lost to protect them as they fled the system.

“Affirmative, Captain,” answered Lieutenant Ivanoff, “Descending to Layer 9.”

Eight days later, Kazimir’s rest was interrupted by the sound of Lieutenant Ivanoff’s voice.

“Captain, incoming hail,” she reported, and he immediately rolled from the cot of the second deck, climbed the narrow steel ladder, and moved to the captain’s seat.

“Unidentified Human vessel, please identify yourself and state your purpose,” came the vocal transmission from the vessel on screen, the words spoken in English. The ship itself was almost rectangular, though it looked more like a parallelogram, with a slight but distinctive forward angle of the fore and aft plates. The vessel was one hundred and twenty meters tall, eighty meters across, and three hundred and ninety-six meters in length, having a collection of external turrets that would allow it to target a considerable number of enemies should the need arise. It had a simple grey-white colour, and the angle of the rear and forward planes was one hundred and five degrees, resulting in a crisp shape as it floated ahead of them in subspace.

“This is Captain Kazimir Volkov of the Russian Federal Starship Apostol,” Kazimir replied, “We have come with from the Russian Federation with an urgent request for military assistance from the People’s Commonwealth of Independently-Aligned Worlds.” A momentary pause, then a response was provided.

“You are three light years inside of Commonwealth space. We shall lead you to the Interstellar Congress, so that you may deliver your message. Follow,” came the direct instructions, and Kazimir sighed in relief.

“Understood, Captain, thank you,” he replied. It took more than a day, but soon, the ship ahead of them began to ascend to the shallower layers of subspace, and the Apostol followed. By the time they emerged from subspace, the crewmembers had each had time to make themselves presentable, quickly bathing, washing and drying their clothes, and then redressing. As they reentered normal space, Lieutenant Ivanoff tapped a few keys, and the screen brightened to reveal the space around them. They were in a star system with a single white star, with a tetradecagonal formation of starbases on a single plane, each of which at a distance of four hundred million kilometers from a massive central structure. This structure was itself positioned one hundred and sixty million kilometers above the white star in the disc of the solar system. The monumental starbase was rectangular, one thousand kilometers wide, two thousand kilometers tall, and ten thousand kilometers long, with massive doors visible on the end they approached.

“Approaching Capitol Hall, Captain Volkov,” informed the voice from the other vessel, as the doors opened, and they floated into the pressurized internal docking bay to land, “I will meet you in the docking bay presently. I am Vanak Talar, Captain of the C. S. V. Turanu.” Kazimir quickly moved to the disembarkation ramp of the ship, thinking of the unusualness of the name of the other Captain and for that matter, the name of his ship. As the ramp lowered and revealed the interior of the docking bay with a plain floor of dark grey metal, however, he immediately saw a collection of strange individuals awaiting him, each dressed in the Commonwealth’s standard naval uniform. The uniform, itself, was dark blue, accented with metallic lines and metal buttons of a golden yellow colour, which was the only thing that all who awaited them had in common. As the fourteen-person crew descended the ramp bravely, they took the chance to look at the handful of individuals who waited for them, with a handgun strapped to one hip.

Kazimir noticed their firearms were of irrefutably superior quality, and they had a line on each side of the barrel with a crackling electrical light inside of it. The handgrip was about a half-inch longer than the handgrip on his own, which spoke of a difference in the firing mechanism and the clip size. It had a gleaming steel colour accented by a true-black grip, and three clips directly below it strapped to the thigh of each sailor.

The Captain himself was of unmistakable bearing, and he was a man who stood at a height of six feet three inches and two hundred ten pounds. He had dark grey skin covered thickly in a layer of plush, true-black fur covered with white markings: a line down the nose, which branched out over his cheekbones and looped around to cross over his eyes, where they curved upward and went over the top of the head. The lines continued down the back, presumably, though the long-sleeved uniform shirt and ankle-length uniform breeches concealed that, and continued down the full length of the thirty-six-inch tail, which was a little broader than it was thick. The two stripes of white on the tail were separated by a thick band of black, as the tail emerged from a specialized opening in the back of the uniform breeches to allow it to pass through comfortably. His face was nevertheless quite humanlike in appearance, aside from the thick fur and the unfamiliar colours, and Kazimir drew up slightly short before him.

On the Commonwealth Captain’s immediate left, there stood an Englishwoman five feet ten inches in height, one hundred ninety pounds in weight, with a healthy curvature to her shape. On the Captain’s right side, there was a woman six feet four inches tall with mauve eyes, a shoulder-length ponytail of plum-coloured hair, and skin of thistle pigment with amethyst-coloured lips.

“You are…”

“Not Human, I know,” replied the fur-covered Captain with a brief chortle, extending one five-fingered hand in greeting, “Welcome to the Commonwealth, Captain Volkov. I am Vanak Talar, and I am a Mephitayan. These are my Lieutenants, Anna Harper and Mora Lannin, Mora is a Tellurian. They will escort your crew to food and then to comfortable beds so you may have a brief rest. You are scheduled to address the members of the Interstellar Congress in thirty minutes, Captain, I hope you are prepared to deliver Russia’s request for aid.”

“Thank you, Captain,” said Kazimir politely, still startled by being greeted by two who were of irrefutably alien origin, and who were clearly aligned with the largest portion of Humanity. Vanak nodded in answer, then turned, and led him quickly from the docking bay as he separated from his crew, allowing them to have some respite even as he would have no such opportunity in the immediate or foreseeable future.

Following a walk that seemed like miles, a vertical ascent in an unusually silent elevator, and then a walk of a few hundred additional yards, they reached a pair of doors.

“This is the Urgent Address Chamber of the Congress Hall. The members of Congress have convened, herein, and now await the deliverance of your message,” Vanak informed him. Kazimir concluded from the name of the room before whose doors he stood, that this was an uncommon incident and not an everyday occurrence, but an uncommon incident for which they were quite well prepared. As Vanak pressed the button, the twenty-foot-tall steel paneling of the double-doors parted soundlessly, to reveal a chamber far larger than he had expected. Three hundred meters long, one hundred meters wide, and twenty meters tall, there was seating on three levels, and he could not help but to pause and stare awestruck as he looked about. He could see that one entire section looked like it was a collection of crystalline aquariums filled with water, within which floated some of the congressional representatives he had come to address. Some of them looked like hominid sharks to his eyes, and others like hominid dolphins, while another delegation of hominid cetaceans was considerably larger, with an appearance vaguely reminiscent of the killer whales of Earth.

“Captain Kazimir Volkov of the Russian Federation,” announced a voice from the far end of the hall, and he looked down the length of the hall, and stared in surprise once more. Standing at a podium on an upraised dais, there was a man with skin and hair of true-black colour in an outfit of the same pigment. The sclera of each of his eyes had discernibly true-black colour, with vibrant blue irises set therein, between black sclera and equally black pupils. The man stood seven feet eight and a half inches in height, three hundred eighty-six pounds in heavily muscled weight, as he looked down the hall and focused on the Russian messenger.

“You may address the Assembly,” concluded the large, dark male.

“Thank you,” Kazimir said, as a panel in the floor ahead of him split in half and a two-step dais rose, with a podium at which he could speak more easily and, no doubt, more comfortably.

“The Russian Federation is in a situation of dire peril,” Kazimir began, “our solar state has been invaded by a hostile foreign civilization known as the Klaxari. For four years, we have attempted to stave off their invasion, and have attempted to convince them to return to a more communicative state, but they are unwilling to open negotiations for peace, though we have strove in earnest for such a resolution. Now, the Russian Federation stands on the brink of being completely overrun, as our attackers have seized control of almost every province. It pains my superiors to say, but I shall be honest: Russia is in dire need of aid, and we knew of only one place where we might find such assistance, and I may have already arrived too late, for even now, the Russian homeworlds may already have been conquered by the Klaxari.”

“Envoy Lalua Miroun of Telluria 5,” pronounced the enormous announcer at the far end of the hall.

“Let us hope that is not the case, Captain Volkov” said one thistle-skinned delegate, a woman whom Kazimir immediately recognized as of the same Tellurian origin as one of Vanak’s two lady lieutenants, “the Klaxari are loath to relinquish hard-won prizes. If, as you fear, the Russia worlds have already been utterly overrun, the Commonwealth would be forced to make a more decisive show of force to recover Russian independence.” The more subtle nuance of her statement, Kazimir realized, was that it sounded like the Commonwealth was inherently inclined to be helpful, and his mission was not a forlorn one.

“The members of the Interstellar Congress shall now vote on the request for aid for the Russian Federation,” pronounced the looming male. Kazimir blinked, surprised that it was so streamlined and swift a response that he had only to deliver his message, and without hesitation the matter should be voted on.

Even as he waited, he could see symbols of light appearing in front of each of the delegates, as they cast their vote publicly for or against the proposed military initiative. He was surprised by the number of crossbar symbols that looked like the familiar mathematical symbol of a plus, which were showing up readily, and indeed stunned when he found that to be the universal response throughout the great hall.

“The Interstellar Congress has determined by unanimous vote that the Russian Federation shall be provided military support in favour of their sustained state of self-governance,” declared the announcer. Kazimir was then led from the chamber by another member of the faculty, who proceeded to lead him quickly to a dining hall wherein he found his crewmen.

“You have thirteen hours to prepare for departure,” said the member of the staff informatively, “that is how long it will require for an Omega Intervention Fleet to assemble.” Kazimir blinked, impressed by how quickly they could assemble a fleet, and wondering what precisely the Commonwealth’s Omega Expeditionary Fleet would be, as he would be the first Russian to see one.

Thirteen hours later, Kazimir and his crew boarded their reconnaissance gunship and the doors of the docking bay opened to allow them to depart from the Congress Hall. As they entered open space once more, Kazimir’s stared wide-eyed at the view-screen on the bridge of the Apostol as he looked at the Omega Intervention Fleet. The number of ships was less than he had expected, but the individual vessels were of a manufacture and technology so far superior to what Russia had available that it left Kazimir feeling bewildered, for he had not thought his homeland so primitive. Yet, confronted with unmistakable evidence of the advancement of the Commonwealth, it was made unquestionably clear that in the last nearly two hundred years, the rest of Humanity and their allies had surged far ahead.

The Omega Intervention Fleet was centered on one rectangular vessel of monumental size, which spanned two thousand meters in length, one thousand meters in width, and six hundred meters in height. On the plating of the port and starboard planes, there were four rotating circular panels, equidistant from one another and the two outermost of them located four hundred meters from the end of the ship. Each panel was affixed with turret-mounted cannons with twelve barrels, each ten meters in length with an interior diameter of sixty-one centimeters, arranged in a three-by-four formation. The dorsal and ventral planes of the ship had similar turrets though in far higher volume, allowing the vessel the capacity to fire on an impressive number of hostile targets simultaneously or to focus a massive volume of fire on a few single targets.

This enormous vessel was accompanied by four vessels that were slightly less massive, also rectangular but in this case taller than they were wide: one thousand eight hundred meters in length, two hundred meters in width, and four hundred meters in height. Each of these four vessels was equipped with two hundred embedded cannon barrels one meter in diameter, down the length of the port and starboard planes. Additionally, the fore and aft plates had four cannons two meters in internal diameter, while there were turrets similar to those on the largest vessel located on the dorsal and ventral planes of the ship, with the same twelve-barreled turrets.

This core was accompanied by twenty vessels that could be described as small by comparison: one hundred meters long, two hundred meters wide, and thirty meters tall. Each of these had a slight upward curvature to the wings, which were also slightly backswept, giving them the appearance of an extremely wide and extremely shallow U shape, with wing-mounted cannons. The forward plane of each wing had twelve barrels that were twenty centimeters across, in two rows of six on each wing, ending with a thirteenth barrel forty centimeters in diameter. Kazimir quickly noticed the aft plane of each wing had four of these larger barrels, and the outer edge of each wing had an additional two such barrels. For their size, each of these vessels looked impressively heavily armed and ready for precisely the kind of war they were about to be sailing into. He was amazed by the fact that the entire fleet consisted of a mere twenty-five ships in all, but as he looked at the five massive ships at the centre of the formation, perhaps that was all it would require to turn the tide against the Klaxar invasion force.

“Incoming hail, Captain,” reported Lieutenant Ivanoff, bringing it on-screen immediately. On the screen, the bridge of the largest vessel was revealed, with a Tellurian woman in the captain’s seat.

“Captain Volkov, I am Admiral Lenna Hemmaru, Commander of Omega Intervention Fleet Alpha 4. Please bring the Apostol into Aft Docking Bay 2, the Tandoth shall carry you home,” the woman said, and Kazimir nodded in confirmation. The screen switched back to a forward view, and at the centre of the aft section of the enormous ship, four hundred meter panels slid open on three sides to grant access. Lieutenant Ivanoff piloted the Apostol into the bay, and the doors slid shut and pressurized as she set the reconnaissance gunship down gently on the docking bay’s floor. Once more, they disembarked from the Apostol, where they were greeted by a man who looked to Kazimir stunningly similar to the animal he had learned was called a tiger in History class as a boy, though he had never actually seen one himself.

“Welcome board, Captain Volkov. I am Flight Commander Zek Denmur,” he said, then motioned toward the other vessels in the docking bay, compared to which the Apostol was quite small. Each of these was sixty meters wide, thirty meters long, and ten meters tall, with slightly forward-swept wings having a faint downward curvature towards the outer end of each wing. These had eight twenty-centimeter barrels on the forward plane of each wing, and four on the aft plane, with a decisively predatory look.

“I hope you do not mind my asking, but what is this ship? What are these ships?”

“This ship is the Tandoth, an Omega-class Mega-Carrier, and these ships are Omega-class Gunships, found only aboard an Omega-class Mega-Carrier. The four larger ships that provide escort to the Tandoth are Omega-class Dreadnoughts, and the smaller ships are Omega-class Corvettes. Each one carries one hundred Omega Commandoes, in addition to their atmospheric combat readiness. Rest assured, Captain. Russia is in good hands… or paws, anyway, in my case!” He joked, laughing at his own jest and then shaking his head as Kazimir blinked at him in consternation.

“Sorry, Faleen humour, it isn’t for everyone,” said the Faleen male with a faint roll of his shoulders, “In all seriousness, however, you and your crew should take some rest in the Tandoth’s guest chambers. We will reach our destination in less than four days.”

“Four days? It took us nine to get here,” answered Kazimir, and Zek nodded once, firmly.

“The Tandoth’s Subspace Drive has been tested and rated suitable for descent to Subspace Layer 20,” he said in confirmation, and Kazimir blinked in surprise. The Apostol had the most recent Subspace Drive in the Federation, yet the Commonwealth’s Subspace Drives were more than twice as powerful. Once more, he was made keenly aware of how far his homeland had lagged behind the rest of Humanity in technological development for their isolation from the vast majority of the rest of their species.

 

On the nineteenth day of September in Year 93 of the First Interstellar Phase, five days after Kazimir departed from the Russian solar state, great plumes of black smoke rose from nearly every corner of both Russian homeworlds. The fighting had deteriorated into a brutal matter of urban guerrilla warfare as the defenders fought valiantly to protect their worlds from invasion, but the Yamalia Province had been lost two days prior. Between the two occupied worlds, the fleet of Admiral Kuznetzov was Russia’s last glimmer of naval resistance, and even this had been hammered into near obliteration, down to a scant thirty-seven ships. On two sides, the fleet was engaged in a brutal battle for survival against insurmountable odds, and determined to battle to what would soon be a fatal end. Between Kuznetzov’s Fleet and Russia I was a Klaxar Fleet of three hundred and seventy-four ships, while a second Fleet with four hundred and six ships blocked all hope of reaching Russia II. On the ground, Kuznetzov knew the situation was worse: there were no more than ninety thousand men and women in the Russian military still alive in the Tuva Province of Russia I, and less than seventy thousand struggling to safeguard the Amur Province of Russia II.

“Admiral! Our shields are failing!” reported the ship’s chief tactical officer. Even as he tried to make peace with the fact he would soon die, his grim thoughts were interrupted by his navigations officer.

“Admiral! Subspace Rift opening, twenty thousand kilometers to port!”

“On-screen!” The screen lit up, and revealed a massive rift in open space, the familiar sky blue of subspace shimmering brightly for a moment. Then, vessels rose from the watery veil as twenty large warships came sweeping upward out of the plane of the spatial rift. Their eyes widened, however, as these ships were followed by four massive battleships, each having an impressive profile, then stared in slack-jawed amazement as the Tandoth swept smoothly out of the rift, which closed beneath it as soon as it had cleared. He watched as the twenty major warships split evenly and swept toward each of the enemy’s naval formations, forward-mounted rail-cannons flaring brilliantly as the outer cannons launched pulses of white plasma. Electrically charged rounds hammered the shields of enemy vessels on each side of the tattered Russian Fleet, even as several more Russian ships were destroyed, before plasma bursts shredded those shields and decimated Klaxar warships. Even as they cut a brutal swath through enemy formations, the groups of ten smaller warships did not slow, but rather continued in a racing motion toward the occupied and embattled worlds of the Russian people, diving into the atmosphere.

“Admiral! We cannot take another hit!” shouted the chief tactical officer, as a Klaxar vessel fired a brilliant flare of crimson energy toward them. They braced for death, then blinked in amazement as they felt only the slightest hint of a vibration reach them, eyes opening to discover the Tandoth before them.

“Incoming hail, Admiral,” reported the flagship’s pilot.

“It looks like you could use some assistance,” came a woman’s voice, “allow us to handle things from here.”

Even as he watched his screen, monumental plates slid out of the way on three sides at either end of the huge ship, and a swarm of gunships swept out to engage one of the enemy fleets accompanied by one of the battleships. On the other side, the remaining three Dreadnoughts positioned themselves as a defensive bracket safeguarding what was left of the Russian Fleet, and opened fire on the Klaxar formation.

“Your timing is… unmatched, Admiral,” replied Kuznetzov over the vocal communication.

“We were fortunate I reached the Commonwealth in time, Admiral,” answered a Russian officer’s voice, and the Admiral knew his longtime friend, Admiral Petroff, had not died in vain: Captain Volkov had survived, and their last glimmer of hope now shone brightly.

 

In the back of the Omega-class Corvette Yumuru, Lieutenant Emma Renault stood in her cybernetic armour, and watched as the aft hatch opened. The black-haired Frenchwoman looked over her shoulder toward her squad, and focused green eyes on each of them for a heartbeat before looking out the back of the Corvette once more.

“Move out!” she commanded, then walked forward and stepped off the end of the disembarkation ramp, from which she plunged more than five miles toward the ground. She remained vertically upright the entire time, one hand moving toward her left hip and the twenty-four inch cylinder attached to it. Her fingers wrapped around it as she drew nearer the Earth, separating it from her hip and clutching it tightly as her altitude diminished to less than one mile. On her left and right, two of the eight members of her team flanked her, with a third directly behind her by a distance of about seventy feet. Their faces were downturned, and their descent suddenly, smoothly decelerated to less than twenty feet per second, decelerating even more massively as they came within one hundred feet of the ground. Below them, they could see Klaxar soldiers approaching a courtyard of Russian defenders from four directions, and they split into those four spaces.

Emma’s fingers tightened, her left forefinger pressing the first of the four buttons on the cylinder, and from one end extended a thirty-five-foot lash of white plasma that fluttered in the air above her as she fell. Then, her metal boots struck the ground as lightly as if she had simply hopped off the back of a pickup truck, forty-eight feet from the Russian defenders, the lash falling in a loop around her.

“Not one step back! Fight to the last ma-” a Russian lieutenant was shouting, stopping abruptly as he noticed the inexplicable arrival of the four commandos that had simply fallen out of the sky. The Russian soldiers stared as the lash of white plasma lurched into action as her arm moved, coming around in a brutal arc that clove through several Klaxar soldiers fatally. She was a slender, mousy woman, but the lash carved a deadly path through the inferior armour of the massive Klaxar warriors, who ranged three hundred to four hundred fifty pounds and from seven and a half to eight and a half feet in height. Emma pressed forward immediately and forcefully, as the Klaxar warriors fired on her with their mechanized rifles, but with bright flashes of white they struck her shield harmlessly.

On the other side of them, a tiny soldier in matching armour aimed his cylinder down a straight avenue filled with Klaxar soldiers. Abruptly, the end of his cylindrical weapon released a powerful blast of white plasma that quickly expanded to eight meters across in a fan that sheared a path through a hundred Klaxar soldiers instantaneously. Only a heartbeat later, he pressed a button and a narrow blade of white plasma six feet in length extended from the end of the cylinder. The small man, too small to have been a Human, leapt forward with a sweeping twist, with his diminutive form whirling full around before bringing the massive plasma blade shearing through several more before he landed.

Simultaneously, a man of a size even greater than that of the Klaxar wielded the same blade, storming forward with boot-falls that shook the ground. His blade clove devastating swaths into the third Klaxar infantry formation in the process, as a willowy male used the same lash as Emma to slice through the fourth. Finally, the Klaxar lieutenants shouted for retreat, and the Omega Commandos pursued them relentlessly, broadening the section of Russian control for the first time in four years. As the Russian lieutenant looked skyward, he noticed unfamiliar warships had arrived, and were decimating the Klaxar airships despite being radically outnumbered and surrounded. The rail-cannons flared and missile launchers flashed, and the enemies’ shields were eviscerated, with their ships exploding shortly thereafter to rain debris on the countryside. It was a sight more beautiful than the Russian lieutenant had expected to live to see; he didn’t know how it happened, but he knew that someone had arrived to bring salvation to the Russian people, and for that, he was more thankful than he would have been able to put into words at that moment.

 

In the period of less than a week, the Omega Commandoes drove the Klaxar invaders from the landscape and in less than two weeks, the last airships retreated from the Russian atmospheres. By the end of the following month, the Klaxar had abandoned the Russian solar state and had agreed to grant peace to the Russian people in return for an end to newfound hostilities from the Commonwealth.

By January of the following year, the people of Russia rose up in revolt against their government, demanding that their President pursue membership in the People’s Commonwealth of Independently Aligned Worlds. On March 23 of Year 94 of the First Interstellar Phase, the Russian solar state held their first elections as a probationary member, and rejoined the rest of Humanity as members of the Commonwealth.

 


End file.
